Dale & Neumy were joined

Dale & Neumy were joined by the touchdown twins to wrap up the Super Bowl and the NFL season. Looks like Neumy drew the short straw in the “someone has to take a stand on a ridiculous argument and stick by it hell or high water” pool. He is angry that the Patriots didn’t go after Simeon Rice. He lauded the “courageous” (His exact word) Tampa Bay ownership for signing Rice. (Rice was actually signed two years ago, and had a subpar year his first in Tampa.) Neumeier says teams should be praised for having the courage to spend money and sign free agents. He added that that is the reason why the Patriots are “mired in mediocrity”. When the New York Rangers were brought up to him, he waffled a bit. When Dale and the Twins tried to convince Neumy that the reason Rice was so much better this year was due in large part to the guys playing around him. Neumy said he was sick of hearing that “tired, lame” argument about the surrounding cast and wants to dismiss that idea entirely. Dale took a few hits from Bruins fans, one of whom wants him to trash the players more while on NESN. He thinks Dale should just say Steve Shields “stinks”. Dale ended the call with the gentleman by hanging up on him and saying “bite me”. Another caller later had the good humor to say Dale did a “serviceable” broadcasting job on NESN.

There is a blissful two week vacation from Eddie on WWZN. Today Jageler was joined by Nick Cafardo and Tony Massarotti. Their main topic morphed from the Super Bowl to the Super Bowl MVP to fan voting. Jageler says only “get-a-lifers” vote for those things. Massarotti and Cafardo say voting for MVP, All Star games etc should be taken away from the fans. Tony says there should be no emotion in the voting for these things. He says the media is unbiased and not involved emotionally in the games, so they’re the ones who should be doing the voting.

Sean McDonough jokingly today talked about how he’s a “company man” regarding the Red Sox now. When comments were made about the high ticket prices at Fenway, Sean made sure to joke that the Red Sox have many reasonably priced tickets and that they, not he were saying otherwise…

One of the few media members younger than Theo Epstein, Jon Couture says that Theo needs to pull a John Gruden with the Red Sox. A few tweaks here and there to an already established team. I think he’s a week early in his Spring Training schedule though. An article from the Philadelphia Inquirer looks at the Super Bowl’s move to February, and the reverberations that will have. From yesterday is Peter King’s Monday Morning Quarterback. Among the items in Gregg Easterbrook’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback is this gem: “After Oakland missed its third of three two-point conversion attempts and trailed by 13 instead of 10 points as it would have been had the Raiders taken singletons, John Madden reminisced, “When I was coaching in this league, I never went for two until the very end, regardless of the scoreboard. I believed in always taking one point unless it was the very end.” Surely, Madden is in sync with TMQ’s immutable law of the conversion: Take One Till the Fourth. But John — when you were a head coach, there was no two-point option. Madden ran the Raiders from 1969 to 1978. The old AFL two-point rule was ended when the AFL and old NFL merged in 1967. The deuce conversion option was not reinstated until 1994.” What’s this? A national article knocking Madden? Isn’t that sacrilege, or something? I only mostly hear local radio guys like Dennis and Callahan (rightfully) complaining about Madden. He seems exempt from criticism in most TV columns (Hi, Jim Baker) as well as national TV columns. (How ya doin’ Rudy Martzke?)

Eric Kane disagrees with the facts in the TMQ clip: “I think TMQ is one of the best things going…..but I think he’s wrong about Madden and the 2 pt. conversion. The merger may have begun with SB I, but the AFL and NFL remained separate until the 1970 season, when Pit, Balt and Cleve. joined the AFC. As such, 2 pt conversion remained alive and well in the AFL in the ’68 and ’69 seasons.”